Just wondering if we can find the best (and by best I mean most out-there, far-fetched, and insane) creationist story. Who here has had a "debate" with a creationist and gotten to a point where you can't help but laugh?

One of my favorites (among many): (Trying to explain how dinosaurs and man coexisted and how dinosaurs were, in fact, on Noah's ark) "Well obviously they'd be too big normally, so Noah found babies and brought two babies of every dinosaur on the ark."

WHAT?

RAmen,

P.E.T.

Evolution is not a belief, it is a logical conclusion based on rigorous scientific experimentation.
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Evolution is not an hypothesis, it is a truth of the biological world; the exact modes by which it operates are what we debate, not the principle that it occurs.

A few years back Rapid City, SD built the Journey Museum to feature the history of the Black Hills, to howls of godly outrage from some citizens:
1) It references the hot-button phrase 'millions of years.'
2) One path went through a darkened tunnel, where a voiceover related the Lakota Creation myth instead of Genesis. Some of the Letters to the Editor were masterpieces of willfully ignorant bigotry.

I like to share some of the lesser-known Egyptian creation myths* with such people and watch them recoil in horror. I imagine them rushing home to scrub themselves with holy water.

* Sorry, kids, you have to do your own googling to learn about this one.

I will honor Monkey in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.~Charles "Darwin" Dickens

I had a gnarly old woman as a teacher, she taught chemistry and biology mostly, had no formal schooling in fancy things such as pedagogical methodology and such. But what she had was a Phd. in biochemistry and a lifetime of lab work in the most prestige smelling institutions in Europe..

Enter Creation Boy, we will call him that for the dual purpose of humiliation and clarification, who thought it was a good idea to start a debate by answering a chemistry question regarding ground strata and composition with "God created it in layers 6000 years ago" or some such.

What ensued made it very hard for me not to laugh out loud at him.
T=Teacher CB=Creation Boy
T: Well, you could answer that but I can not give you a point for it.
CB: So you admit it is a possible answer?
T: No, I meant you can physically write it, but that does not make it anyway near right my boy.
CB: But how can you prove that it is wrong? If you can disprove it I will accept the score, but carbon dating is not capable of that is it? *sneering*
T: Oh my sweet boy, this does put me in an awkward place.... *worried look*
CB: Well you can just give me my point and we can forget about it. *smugness personified*
T: Well... What I mean is either you slept through the class up until now, or you just have a hard time to grasp these quite basic principles... Either way it is my fault, but according to the target for a passing grade you have to understand this... I just can not give you a pass on this course child. I am very sorry. You till get an A on this exam though, despite the missed point on the strata...

Now, here CB turned red, and then white, in anger I guess, not that he was any other color than cellar-parchment white to begin with. He doggedly and foolishly went back to his (already at this time (-01) outdated) carbon dating argument.

CB: I do not believe you answered my question, how can you prove it?
T: You are right, I did not, because we covered this area of chemistry for a whole two weeks. Application is the test of understanding. You see when dating things, mostly anything, you use a whole number of isotopes in the strata. We of course have the millions of ore samples from the oil and mining industries to thank for our very solid scientific understanding of this are of geological chemistry. I should warn you that if you cross these thoughts over to biology I will have to fail you in that class as well, a shame since your test scores are doing quite well....

What made it extremely funny and made me remember it word for word, is the fact that she spoke to him like a way-ward five tear old. Which she always did to anyone who erred in the sciences. I got my share to but for less aggrieving offenses.

(Pastaliban tip: When arguing with infidels, and asked the "What is your point?" question, present the sharp edge of your scimitar for inspection. Thus dispersing any illusions about your willingness to skewer snooty infidels before dinner.)

Pastaliban,
Nice story, it's always entertaining and interesting to see how teachers at any level cope with these kinds of situations. I think your prof. did the right thing in simply treating it as pitiful ignorance that deserved her attention just as a five-year-old deserves to be told explanations in the simplest of terms.

The carbon dating example is especially relevant. It seems that creationists use this argument in a similar way to their stating that we couldn't know that the universe is 13.7 billion years old because "we weren't there." We can't know how old a given bone or piece of charcoal is by carbon dating simply because we weren't there. If these people would actually learn the process and acknowledge the error margins that geologists associate with these artifacts, they would realize that the science of dating by carbon dating (as well as K-Ar, Ar-Ar, OSL, ESR, and U-series dating) has been strengthened over the last several decades and that we can determine which samples might be providing false age signatures due to impurities, contaminants or stratigraphic mixing.

Anyway, thanks Pastaliban for your anecdote!

P.E.T.

Evolution is not a belief, it is a logical conclusion based on rigorous scientific experimentation.

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Evolution is not an hypothesis, it is a truth of the biological world; the exact modes by which it operates are what we debate, not the principle that it occurs.

once upon a tipme a goose said he wanted people to kill. so he created the universe. but then we "evolved" and took his shotgun. then chuck noris came along and gave him a uppercut. and thats also why they have long necks

Pasta, Creationists, and Chuck Norris folklore all rolled into one. I think we have a definite winner.

i am bored so i qouted u......
here is another one.

so thier was this guy named "ug". he was really cool but a virgin as he was the only one around. so he made the universe. then he waited trillions of years for planets to apperantly magicly appear. then he built a sun. and we evolved. he was going to do it but then he realized he was to cold. so he made stuff that apperantly makes our atmosphere hot. then he went to find a women, but he could not get one cause he was a few trillion years old and wrinkly! so he went to chuck norris to get a women. chuck norris kicked him in the private area and made him into a girl. then he went and just did it with a guy. then he invented the stapler which later killed him when he fought a carjacker. and thats how the universe was made. tell this to all your friends but remember the author.